Let me get this straight…
We’re told that Microsoft’s adCenter paid search platform can target advertising by age, gender and location (it uses MS Passport data from Hotmail, Messenger etc).
Yet Microsoft can’t get the names of customers correct…?
Blog
Reddit’s Freudian Fail
Are Reddit’s editors asleep at the wheel or is this an inspired piece of linkbait?
Bringing Nothing to the Party
There are dozens of books about the dot.com boom and bust in Silicon Valley. But I know only one about similar events in the UK: Bringing Nothing To The Party by Paul Carr.
The book tells tales of now-legendary internet entrepreneurs, like Alex Tew (of the MillionDollarHomepage.com) and Firebox.com founder Michael Smith, as well as the disasterous IPO of Carr’s own dot.com flameout, KudoCities.
If you enjoyed Boo Hoo et al, I highly recommended it.
The Zen and Art of Ubiquitous Capture
‘Ubiquitous capture’ is one of the central ideas behind cult productivity book Getting Things Done.
David Allen disciples believe the first step to productivity is to first capture all ideas and tasks.
Sounds beyond obvious, no? Yet I – and I suspect many others – forget without regular reminders.
The challenge with ubiquitous capture is to find a a tool that works for you.
A quick audit of my jeans pockets presents a motley selection of newspaper cuttings, receipts, to do lists, reminders…. you get the idea.
As of this week, that changes c/o Evernote. The software is a year old, so I might well be the last geek in the world to hear about it. But in case it has also passed you by, here’s why you need it in your arsenal of productivity tools.
Evernote is a note-taking tool designed to capture, store and organise ‘to do’ items in one place: typed messages, scribbled notes, snapshots, photos, web pages, voice recordings.
You can file all these scraps of data and information you store day-to-day in one place, as you go, and Evernote files and sorts them in a logical, highly usable way.
For example, all images are scanned by OCR to make any text searchable in your archive. So if you take a snapshot of your shopping list, Evernote will read the text and archive it.
Evernote comes in web, desktop and iPhone flavours, so there’s no excuse for ubiquitous capture not being, er, ubiquitous. In short, it seems like the ultimate ubiquitous capture tool.
See Evernote in action below.
PS. Seasoned Evernote user? I’d love to hear any tips and tricks in the comments.
Affiliate Marketing for Beginners
I was talking about my baby steps in affiliate marketing last week.
It were nowt but fields at Affiliates4u.com, you could get 10 AdWords clicks to the dollar and still have change left over to buy a hyphenated .info domain.
[Apologies to readers outside the UK for the laboured Brit-centric gag].
Joking aside – it was tough to know where to begin.
It’s not that I couldn’t find advice online. Quite the opposite – I found more forums, blogs, ebooks, PDFs and autoresponders than I could read in a lifetime.
Plus precisely zero quality control – and there was no shortage of shonky rich quick schemes.
Bottom line: it was next-to-impossible to know which sources could be trusted.
I was chatting to a new affiliate earlier this year, and it sounds like not much has changed.
That’s why I think Affiliate Window Academy – a training day for newbies – is a great idea:
February saw the first ever AW affiliate training day take place, we received some great feedback from participants and so, as planned, the course will now run every eight weeks. We are pleased to announce that the next event will take place on Monday 20th April, at our offices in Tower Hill.
The half-day training course has been specifically created for ‘novice’ affiliates; to be eligible to attend you must have generated a minimum of £25 in commission since joining the network. The course consists of five seminar sessions introducing techniques to help you increase your earning potential through Affiliate Window.
Contact hayley [dot] short [at] affiliatewindow [dot] com to put your name down.
PS. Nickycakes’ newbie guide to affiliate marketing looks like a good starting point for affiliates outside London/UK.
“We Buy Websites” Open For Business
I buy websites. But I pass up dozens of quality websites for sale each month.
Most don’t fit my portfolio of sites. Maybe they have too little traffic, are too niche, not niche enough, out of my budget etc. You get the idea. I turn down high-quality sites for a million and one reasons.
But many webmasters ask if I’ll forward details of their websites for sale to other potential buyers. So I’ve started a mailing list for interested buyers: We Buy Websites.
You can read the full story or simply signup here:
Your personal details will not be sold, rented or other misused (see the privacy policy).
NB. This mailing list is separate from my blog mailing list. You’ll need to subscribe to each individually. Of course, you can unsubscribe at any time (there’s a link in the footer of each email).